Friday, December 27, 2013

Thanks to a
parent-infuriating ad campaign featuring everyone's favorite ambassador of
Christmas goodwill as an axe-murdering maniac, the
original SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984) gained almost immediate infamy as a
slasher flick in particularly bad taste. This first sequel, however, took a
little more time to gain its own kind of infamy... as one of the worst films
ever made! Pretty much flatly dismissed in its day as useless trash, Part 2 has
slowly but steadily gained its own devoted fan following and has been wowing bad
movie fans for the past 25+ years with its hilariously awful acting and dialogue
and pathetic attempts to pad it out to feature length status by recycling tons
of footage from the original film. Just how much footage? At least half
of the running time! This was never even intended to really be a sequel in the
traditional sense. The producers of the original had hired director Lee Harry to
film some framing sequences (all set in an asylum) and then simply re-cut the
first film to try to pass it off as a sequel. Instead, Harry (along with three
other writers) scripted more than was originally intended and the resulting film
(which has about 40 minutes of new footage) was then shot over a 10 day period.
I suppose we should thank Harry for at least doing that much.

On Christmas Eve, Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman), the equally
unhinged brother of the original film's "Santa Claus Killer" Billy Chapman
(now quite sure how that surname change came to be), sits in a mental
institution angrily scowling and puffing away on cigarettes. Psychiatrist Dr.
Henry Bloom (James Newman) shows up, sets up his tape recorder and
attempts to get Ricky to tell him his life story. Ricky isn't too fond of
recounting his tale for this nosy "pencil neck piece of shit" but seeing how it
may be his last chance to come clean he decides to humor him. And thus begins a
long series of flashbacks to the original film, including repeat scenes of Billy
and Ricky's parents being killed by a psycho Santa, their ill-treatment at Saint
Mary's Orphanage at the hands of the cruel Mother Superior
and 18-year-old Billy's eventual murder spree before he's shot and killed by the
police. Ricky seems to have amazingly vivid recollections of some of the events,
especially when you take into consideration he wasn't even there to witness most
of them!

It isn't even until the 40 minute mark that we get to hear a little about
how Ricky ended up in the mental institution, which is then shown in a series of
side-splitting flashbacks. At age 12, he's adopted by Martha and Morty Rosenberg
(Corinne Gelfan, Michael Combatti), who are concerned over the
fact that young Ricky has seizures whenever he sees nuns and seems to react
violently to the color red ("Red car. Good point."), but Sister Mary (Nadya
Wynd) ensures them that all he needs is a stable family. Five years later,
Ricky's stepfather dies, which hits him pretty hard. After all, "You tend to get
paranoid when everyone around you gets dead." Ricky goes for a walk and
encounters a man roughing up his girlfriend, which brings on traumatic
flashbacks to his parents getting killed... never mind the fact he was an infant
when that happened. After he runs over the guy repeatedly with a jeep, the
victim's girlfriend walks up to him, smiles and calmly says "Thank you" (?) A
year later, Ricky hears something that sounds like "some squirrel getting his
nuts squeezed," gets into an altercation with a thug (Frank Novak) and
then impales him him with an umbrella that is then opened.

Ricky ends up bumping into the beautiful Jennifer (Elizabeth "Cayton"
/ Kaitan), but even she cannot calm the snarling beast. The two go on a
date to a movie theater where we see even more footage from the original
Silent Night and Ricky kills an obnoxious heckler in the audience
("Naughty!"). He uses a battery charger to make Jennifer's ex-boyfriend's
eyeball explode, strangles Jennifer with a car antennae ("Uh oh!") and then
shoots a cop in the head with own gun before going on a ludicrous shooting
rampage through suburbia while laughing maniacally and shouting things like
"Punish!" and, most famously, "Garbage Day!" (a clip of which has managed to get
5 million hits on Youtube). Once he's cornered by more cops, Ricky turns the gun
on himself but discovers he's out of bullets... Back to the present day, Ricky
murders Dr. Bloom, manages to escape the nuthouse and then heads out after "that
bitch Superior." The wheelchair bound Mother Superior (Jean Miller) is
said to have suffered from a stroke but they've applied some kind of weird burn
/ scar make-up to her face to try to disguise the fact it's a different actress
in the role!

Freeman's ridiculously over-the-top performance (and hilariously
overactive eyebrows) have made him something of a cult icon over the years. When
no one was unable to hunt him down to do a DVD commentary track, fans went on a
crusade to locate him and a website was even set up specifically for the cause (http://www.findingfreeman.com/).
About a week ago to this day, Freeman finally surfaced, appeared at the
New Beverly Cinema for a special screening of the film and did an interview with FearNet. Freeman's only other notable film appearances were in
David DeCoteau's bizarre slasher / gore flick MURDER WEAPON (1989; where he was
billed as "Damon Charles") and a bit in the comedy Ghost Writer (also 1989). He did not get to reprise the role of Ricky in Silent Night, Deadly Night III:
Better Watch Out! (1989) and the part was given to Bill Moseley.

Terrible as this all is, in some strange way I actually prefer watching this sequel to the
original film. Not only do you get loads of laughs in the new footage, but it
also cuts out the middle man by showing all of the highlights from the first
film. Both films have been issued numerous times on DVD by Anchor Bay.

Hidden Horror

I contributed an essay on George A. Romero's 'Season of the Witch' (1972) to this wonderful book celebrating overlooked or underrated horror films. Forward by William "Maniac" Lustig and endorsed by Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund. Click on the photo to be redirected to Amazon where you can learn more or purchase a copy.

Total Pageviews

Followers

Follow by Email

About Me

Ratings Key

★★★★ = Excellent. The best the genre has to offer.★★★1/2 = Very Good. Perhaps not "perfect," but undoubtedly a must-see.★★★ = Good. Accomplishes what it sets out to do and does it well.★★1/2 = Fair. Clearly flawed and nothing spectacular, but competently made. OK entertainment.★★ = Mediocre. Either highly uneven or by-the-numbers and uninspired.★1/2 = Bad. Very little to recommend.★ = Very Bad. An absolute chore to sit through.NO STARS! = Abysmal. Unwatchable dreck that isn't even bad-movie amusing.SBIG = So Bad It's Good. Technically awful movies with massive entertainment value.